


Dumb Luck

by EnvelopesYou



Category: Game Grumps
Genre: F/M, Romance, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-11-03
Packaged: 2018-04-28 20:12:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5104265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnvelopesYou/pseuds/EnvelopesYou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny finds himself lost and suddenly found in the way that’s always marked every aspect of his life. Serendipity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I'm Im

The best place to work when home was too stifling at the late hour of just-past-three in the morning was the downtown diner. Hardly anyone ever went in there after midnight, which often caused him to wonder why it stayed open twenty four hours in the first place. But Danny counted himself grateful because he could always look forward to his hiding spot in the back. Working on lyrics was becoming intensely frustrating and no change of scenery or keeping things familiar was getting those gears to turn. It wasn’t like he had a real deadline but if he didn’t come up with something good soon this would just be another thing in a long line of shit that never got done. And always his fault. Lack of motivation was a beast. 

Lack of inspiration?   
That killed. 

One of those chilly autumn rains had cast down over the city, but not even the steady and soothing drumbeat, pitter-patter of the drops against the windows served to fuel him. Instead he sat there, for what he thought must have been an hour at least, twisting his pencil around his fingers, tapping to the page in an uneven line of graphite dots before dropping it and letting it roll to the corner of the table. His coffee had gone cold fifteen minutes ago. 

For the first time since he’d rushed in there to get out of the storm he looked up and actually surveyed his surroundings. Lost souls, just like his, sitting in different sections just to be alone. Heads down. Miserable. He knew the feeling intimately. 

But among them, though friend in spirit, one girl stood out. Figuratively speaking. She, too, had her head down despite sitting smack dab in the middle of the restaurant. Her eyes were lowered, watching the most likely unmoving liquid in her mug- or perhaps she’d finished it and was looking straight through to the bottom. None of it mattered, but Danny’s mind drifted to all the seemingly endless possibilities watching her. She was beautiful. Of this there was no doubt. But he was often finding himself in positions of admiring women. It was just the way he was. He’d made peace with it a long time ago. 

Sensing, maybe, that she was being watched she looked up. His breath caught.   
The tell-tale sign of just slightly enlarged pupils and those murky deposits around her irises that made it look like the galaxy was reflecting back at him.

Oh.  
She was trouble. And he wanted in almost immediately. 

She kept his gaze, unafraid most likely, but dropped first in the end. He stayed on her like the abrasive idiot he knew he was until she looked up again. Despite her neutral expression she seemed darkened with a hanging sadness. Or maybe he was projecting. It was always hard to tell. Her head tipped to the side as her eyes stayed with him, and he purposely kept on looking. Almost trying to provoke her. Just to see. Just to feel. Stuck. 

And then finally when his muscles started working again he pushed himself up out of the booth and went over to her table. No idea what to say. No idea why he was doing it. No game plan. No nothing. But that was who he was. He always just waltzed in to everything and if it worked, it worked. If it didn’t, he had another self deprecating story full of mirth to tell his friends later. She was way out of his league, this much he knew. And yet when he pulled out a chair opposite her, her reaction was soft and not of quick dismissal. 

Even if she’d gone back to look at- yes- the bottom of her empty cup. 

He swallowed, a little harder than he meant to, a little anxious now. “You okay?” This seemed like a decent thing to ask. She was, after all, sitting in a diner at now four in the morning peering into a mug. But it wasn’t just that. The mood clung to her like a cloak. He’d heard stories, though he’d never seen one up close. And the better, louder, part of him was hoping he wasn’t just using her to find out. Couldn’t be. He hoped. 

“Doesn’t matter.” Her voice was softer than he imagined it might be, for some reason, just an octave lower than he’d realized he’d been fantasizing about unconsciously before actually coming over. Her answer was completely crystal clear. People who were okay didn’t say things like that. But maybe she meant it more that she didn’t know him, he didn’t know her, and whether or not she was okay had no bearing on him.

Didn’t matter.  
But it did.

Danny found himself wishing that he’d brought over his notebook or his cup of coffee just so he’d have something to do with his hands. As it was he now found himself sitting across this woman he knew nothing about, leaning back in his chair, staring awkwardly. Wasn’t that just like him. “You from around here?” 

“No.” At least this answer was a little less pretend-vague. Maybe she’d run here. It was plausible. To a more tolerant state. But that put more nails in his empathy. If she had run here something bad had happened. 

“What’s your name?” Why he was picking up on her, or trying- and not entirely for the wrong reasons, he hadn’t the foggiest. Maybe because he had nothing better to do. But it was more than that. And he couldn’t let it go now. 

She shifted her shoulders back in an alarmingly immature shrug. “Unimportant.” And her answer topped it off.

Yet he found himself smiling. “Well, Unimportant, my name’s Danny.” Not that she’d asked and maybe not that she even cared. But he was dying to do anything to make her smile.

And when she did, corner of her lip quirking up softly, he felt like he’d just won the lottery. Did some serious good in the world for once. It was when she looked up and directly at him, though, that he felt himself melting into mud. “Hi, Danny.” Such a shy tone came with such a striking gaze. But being turned didn’t make you into someone else- at least that’s what he’d heard.

From the good ones. People who knew or had friends or who just were compassionate in general. Not like the bigots and those on a rampage to destroy what they didn’t understand. Not keen on recognizing suffering where it stood. He tried to get a hold of himself, running a hand back through his hair. “Are you with anyone?” He meant this in a completely innocent manner. She was new to the city, that much he gathered now- why she’d run here was probably none of his business, though he found himself terribly interested. Was she safe? 

Her smile vanished in just another instant and he regretted his question. Then her eyes dropped and he rued even more. “Not anymore.” 

This held many awful implications. Whether she’d gotten her heart broken or whomever she’d been with had been hunted and killed. Who knew. All he did know was that he didn’t want her to hurt. Didn’t want her to be scared. She didn’t deserve that.   
He had no idea who she was. What she was capable of. Anything about her. But he knew that she didn’t. He didn’t just know it.

He felt it.   
Deep in the pit of his soul. 

“You have some place to go?” He’d barely said more than a few words to her. Knew nothing about her. And somewhere in him his mind was kicking up all the propaganda he’d ever heard. That they were dangerous. That they drew you in. And then killed you. Drank you dry and dumped your body out on some god forsaken road with nary a single drop of guilt. All the disgusting things that had been put against their kind for so long- 

And consciously he squeezed the lever in the opposite direction and shut it all off. Humans did disgusting and awful shit to each other all the time, too. Vampires were no different. He was sure there were cruel ones. Just like some people in the world would tear your heart out for fun and laugh in the aftermath. But there were good ones, too. And he could feel it in the vibration around them, not that he really believed in that sort of thing. 

His overly trusting sense was telling him to pursue. 

And when she shook her head, reached up to right some of the fringe that had fallen away from her ear, he knew what he had to do. “You’re free to stay at my place. It’s shitty and small- what can you do- but-“ He didn’t have much to offer. But just like anyone else having trouble, if she needed it, it was hers. His place. 

His food.  
His happiness.   
His soul- 

“You don’t even know anything about me.” This was true. Her tone was dejected but not carelessly unkind. Not even to herself. 

His easy smile found him as he sat back in his chair. “Sure I do. You’re new to the city, your name is silly and long so let’s shorten it toooo...” Dragging it out as he thought, “Im.” Dropping the ‘un’ right out of there because right now she was the most important thing that he could think of in recent days. “Im’s cute. Fits you. So. You’re new here. Your nickname is Im and you don’t have anywhere to go.” He cut out all the surveying he’d done. None of that was important and might be overbearing considering the circumstances. “And I’d say that you’re alone, but hey- you know me now so you’re not.” 

Danny was never the best at this sort of thing- picking up girls was not his forte. He was goofy and giggling and smiled too much. But maybe that’s why this was easy. He wasn’t trying to take her home like that. He just wanted to give her just a touch of kindness that he felt she might not know. Maybe she hadn’t known it for a long time. He wanted her to be okay.   
More than okay. And right now, she wasn’t.

And when she looked up at him again, smiled again- he knew he was doing the right thing. “You’re sure?” He watched her mouth a little more than he meant to, and when he caught sight of those small but extra sharp canines he found he... didn’t feel any different at all.   
...actually, they were sort of cute. Most people depicted them as super long and dangerous looking. But this was just a quirk like anything else, almost. They fit her. 

“Totally sure.” His answer was as casual as he felt about this situation. 

She nodded and he felt the world lift off his shoulders. “Cool.” 

He’d gone to the diner to fix his head. To find some sort of muse that would help him. Push him. Make him do that great thing he was still waiting to really do. And now he was escorting home a girl he honestly did know nothing about just because the look in her eyes was beautifully haunting. 

Important happenstance often found its place in his life. Whether he liked it or not. Little moments built the entirety of who he was. Compounded and built until something bloomed. That’s how he found himself where he was. Where he was going. Who he’d turned into.

And Im was perhaps the most Important Happenstance of them all.  
He just didn’t know it yet.


	2. You're Im

The first morning after he’d brought her home, which roughly came three hours after running home in the rain, he made his way out to the closest store to get blackout curtains. She seemed adamant about not taking up his bed no matter how much he protested. The only problem was that the living room got awfully bright and he only had those crappy metal blinds that got tangled with every pull. So he made it his mission right before the sun came up to get her some dark, thick curtains. She was already dozing lightly on the couch by the time he got back and started hanging them up. Sunlight simply ceased to be the moment he installed them properly, which took at least two tries to get the bar in the wall correctly.

She didn’t seem too disturbed before he set up- and had been very much dead asleep regardless of how hard he banged the screws into place (and he’d looked over his shoulder to check, and even apologized to her regardless of the fact that she was not conscious), but now that blackness had enveloped the room she seemed somehow more peaceful. Or maybe it was his imagination. Probably more that than anything else.

Im never stayed asleep for too long. He figured this out a week in. Though it was getting darker much earlier, which must have been nice he guessed, for someone like her, she got up after five hours or so of very heavy sleeping and just went about her business. Danny himself wasn’t home too often, so he couldn’t imagine what she did when she was sequestered, yet he never felt any sense of hesitancy leaving her in his apartment. He didn’t have anything to take or anything to be snooped in, but even if he did, he knew he wouldn’t have cared. He didn’t know much about her but for whatever reason, he trusted her.

Something that his friends told him was bad- and most likely her doing.  
_When they look at you in the eyes you lose a part of yourself._  
That silly thing they called glamour or hypnotism or charm or whatever books and movies were making up these days. But he hadn’t lost himself in her eyes, he’d found something instead. Maybe it was the same thing. But she was filling him up. Every otherwise unoccupied space was now resonating with her. And he loved it.

 _They’re dangerous. She’ll kill you without a second thought if she needs food._  
How could that be true? Im seemed completely harmless. That was untrue by her very nature, sure, he guessed. But she didn’t seem like the type to strike without reason. She was soft and gentle and sweet. He’d never actually seen her eat anything but normal food- which was strange. He didn’t know much about vampires to begin with, and he didn’t feel like asking was any of his business. He knew they needed blood... right? But to think they could also eat normal food- did it do anything for her? Did she do it just for fun?

He realized he didn’t care. Coming home at night to eat a bowl of cereal with her or drink coffee with her in the afternoon was nice. And so he didn’t care if she didn’t need it. He liked it. Liked the ritual. Sitting quietly with her while the radio played something in the background or the TV droned on some show he wasn’t paying attention. Felt her head on his shoulder as he read or penciled out lyrics. He was becoming used to her presence. And when she went missing one night he realized, one month too late, that he didn’t know what to do without her.

His bag had dropped to the floor, and when she was nowhere to be found- not on the couch or in the shower or sitting at the kitchen table- he panicked. And then told himself promptly to calm down. She could handle herself. She was a predator by nature, right? She had reflexes sharper than human. Strength greater than average. She wasn’t in danger- Danny was sure of it. But where was she?

It was stupid. Ridiculous. She didn’t belong to him. He didn’t belong to her. Even if they’d fallen asleep together a handful of times. Even if when she smiled things felt right in the world. Even if they held hands and did almost everything together when they were both home. She’d just come into his life and now he was terrified she was about to vanish much the same way. He knew nothing about her. Not even her real name. How utterly and terribly pathetic. He’d fallen in love with ... whom, exactly?

A nobody. If she loved him wouldn’t she have opened up at any point? Or was he really, as his friends had suggested, just a sap to be taken advantage of? Must have been. That was how he felt. Played-

No.  
_No_.  
So she was gone. So what? She might have had something to take care of. He checked the clock above the oven. Ten at night. Instead of worrying he set a pot of water on to boil. Macaroni and cheese seemed easy enough to do while he-... not waited. He wasn’t waiting for her. Surely not.

Yet he was. He already knew he wasn’t going to be able to go to bed until she came home-  
Or... not home. She didn’t live there. She did but she didn’t. And certainly she wasn’t coming home **to** him.

His head was all twisted up. He knew that. In that moment he knew. Since first catching her gaze at the diner. She’d been just the kind of soft trouble he’d needed. Wanted. A companion. Someone to fill that empty space in his life. In his head. In his heart. And she had. For a long thirty-one days she had. Every single day, for that matter. She’d just always been there. One month was nothing, really. Short. Sweet. And who even knew how long she had lived, herself? He was probably nothing to her.

But she was suddenly everything to him. He was always this way. Falling hard and fast. Always for the wrong ones.  
Was Im wrong, too?

Just as he was draining the cooked noodles the front door opened and he felt that immeasurable wave of relief settle over him. He set the pot back on the stove and turned to watch her come in, shoulders sagging forward. Defeat? Tired? He couldn’t tell.

“Everything okay?” She seemed not to hear him, instead going right to the table- which indicated she at least knew he was there, sitting down and dropping her arms to the top and then her head into her arms. Could have been anything. “...Im?” She didn’t budge then, either so he turned his back to her to let her be. Instead focusing on finishing the cheese part of macaroni-and-cheese. Then he served two bowls and put one down in front of her and sat down to her left.

“I’m hungry.” Her voice was drawn, softer than he could ever remember hearing it.

“So eat.” Nudging her bowl closer to her- and then he realized his folly. “Oh.” She wasn’t talking about food. Not food that he knew. This was out of his depth. “...is that why you were gone?” He never tried to ask her too many things. She never had answers for him, so after the first few days of either silence or playful sidesteps, he just had given up. She’d talk when she wanted to, so he figured. But instead he’d just become complacent with not knowing. But this he wanted to know.

Well. He wanted to know everything. But this seemed more important in the moment.

When she did nothing- said nothing- he put his fork down and reached over with his right hand to smooth up and down her back. “Im?” Trying to coax her into at least letting him know how to help.

“I don’t have to do it a lot. It’s not like every day or anything- like they say in all the media.” Her wording had always been strange, when she did decide to talk. A decade behind, at the very least. Like she was gripping to whatever time she’d been... well. Whatever the word was. Danny didn’t know. “I didn’t want to bother you so I went out as soon as the sun went down.” After he’d already been gone for the day. Five then, wasn’t it? So she’d been out for five hours? Trying to do what? “But I can’t...”

Danny, in fact, didn’t know a lot. About her. Or her life. Or what she needed. He thought he knew. Companionship and careful affection. That seemed to work. But maybe it had just been him. Maybe in thinking he was helping her he’d only been helping himself. She was hungry. She’d went out to go do whatever it was she did to get food. If his friends and movies had anything to say about it, that was to go seduce someone into an alleyway and then cut them open with her fangs and bleed them dry. But that was callous and cold. Im wasn’t like that.

 _Didn’t want to bother you._  
He woke himself up to this wording, next. “You’re not- you never bother me.” Only the opposite. She’d so quickly become his everything else. Things that weren’t part of his work life. Just everything else. “Look- I don’t... I don’t know a lot about this stuff.” A cold coil wound in the pit of his stomach. “But if you need whatever. I dunno. Whatever it is you need, just tell me and I’ll get it for you.” He was treating her like... like a human. Like she needed steak. But that’s not what she needed. He couldn’t run out and _get_ her anything. His eyes pressed closed tight when he realized this. “I’ll do it for you.”

He’d put his wrists out on the table or tilt his head back to expose his neck. Wherever she needed. Whatever part of him she wanted. It had already belonged to her a month ago when they’d met eyes. He knew that. He’d always known that. And strangely he was okay with that. Because he needed her, too. So if this was what he could offer, then he wanted to.

She said nothing for a long time. Didn’t move. Stayed right where she was. Almost like when she was asleep. Dead asleep. He started wondering if she’d maybe gone that way, it was hard to tell. Just when he’d gone back to eating she spoke again. “Why are you doing this?”

“I don’t know.” That answer was almost too easy, most likely because it was so vague. It wasn’t that he didn’t know exactly, it was that he wasn’t sure how to put it to words. “I might not know a lot about you- but you’re- Im. More than just some sad girl I met at a diner at three in the morning.” Or whatever time it had been. Didn’t matter now. “You’re my roommate. My friend. Someone I look forward to seeing when I get in. Eating with. Hanging out with.” Even when they didn’t talk or share anything intimate. Didn’t matter. At least not to him. “I don’t know where you came from and if you don’t want to talk about it then I don’t want to know about it.” That had always been the case. He’d realized that quickly. “I just know where you are. And that’s with me.” This had suddenly dove right in to something almost romantic. He hadn’t meant to. But his thoughts had been tangled for quite a long time. “That’s all I care about. And if you need something I want to give it to you.” Because whether she knew it or not she already owned every single bit of him.

Finally she sat up, slow as the journey to get herself back was. He waited patiently, watching her carefully. And when her eyes found his again he felt that same sort of awestruck. The universe was looking back at him. “I want to tell you everything.” This was the first time anything like this had ever come out of her mouth. A promise. A desire, even. To open up. He felt a flutter in his chest. “But I can’t.” And then the fire went out again.

Still, he smiled. Found it too hard not to. Reached a hand up to the side of her face. “That’s okay.” And it really was. He had long since come to the realization that he could live out the rest of his life not knowing anything about her, so long as she was still by his side, it wouldn’t have mattered. Her hands reached up, touching against his, holding his to her face. Almost possessively so. He didn’t mind. “Just tell me what you need. Tell me what I can do.”

When she frowned he felt his world crumble. “I can’t do it-“ Not to him? Is that what she wanted to say? He couldn’t find it in himself to let her finish.

“You can. I’m telling you you can. Whatever you need I want you to have it.” He made sure every word was grounded and strong. He’d already made up his mind. The real problem was suddenly becoming the vagueness that always surrounded her. “If you need blood, take it.” All of it, if she wanted. He might have ended up dying unfulfilled, but he wouldn’t have been able to say he’d have died unhappy.

She still clutched at his hand, turned her cheek more towards his palm. Her eyes slipped closed but he still felt the tether that had bound them so strongly. The need and the want- the desire, he knew it well now. “Can we start slow?” Her voice had turned whispery.

It shot straight through him. “Is this a sexual thing?” The words came out of him before he could stop them. Curious and confused and terribly uncool. That was him to a T.

Then she looked at him again and he felt everything all at once. “If you want it to be.”

The dynamics were about to shift, and he was too weak to do anything but let it happen. He swallowed hard, leaning in closer, taking her other cheek in his opposite palm. “Do you want it to be?” Because he sure as hell did- that had to have been obvious. But if she didn’t he’d live with it. As long as she stuck around.

Her answer took mere seconds. “Yes.” And his response only one, brushing his lips against hers in what felt like the most satisfying moment of his entire life.

Although soon to be outshined completely by actions far stronger and needier in his bedroom.


End file.
